Once upon a time there was this company called Animeigo who released subtitled anime in the Unites States on both VHS and Laserdisc. At the time this was considered to be almost unheard of. Anime nearly always came out in a dubbed, chopped, mutilated form and only on VHS tape if at all. Animeigo was lauded for their efforts and quickly became the most respected name among US anime companies. Their attention to detail was second to none. The subtitles on their discs were excellent as was the cover art and liner notes.

While Animeigo was engaged in this task other anime companies had started to take cues from them and release higher quality products. Anime also started to become popular which led to even more companies releasing anime in a not-so-sucky form. Some companies even released laserdiscs. Granted they weren't the works of art the early Animeigo discs were, but still, they were lasers.

Eventually Animeigo decided to release a box set of discs. A long time later these discs came out. As everyone who was familiar with Animeigo expects these discs were late coming out. However, they weren't just late, they were really late. These discs were supposed to contain lots of extras and special stuff that you couldn't get elsewhere. Imagine the suprise of the fans when the discs came with the sum extra of a couple of Japanese public service announcements and a tshirt so ugly people were scared of it. The laserdiscs also came in an unprecedented case. It was this monolithic plastic monstrousity that wouldn't fit in any ordinary laserdisc cabinet. Then there was the fact that the sleeves were not the ordinary protective disc sleeves you would expect. Instead fans were treated to plastic sleeves which would actively ruin the discs stored in them. All in all, the set was a great success, so great in fact that the subsequent sets in the same series were never made.

Animeigo kept periodically releasing titles during the epic era of their first box set of lasers. Some titles were good, some not, but at least most all of them were late. Then came a dry spell. Their new tape output dropped to about 3 tapes per millenium. Their flagship long-running series came to a near standstill in terms of releases. During this time the anime market exploded. Multitudes of new companies sprung up releasign all kinds of anime that no one ever expected to see released in the US. There was an interesting contrast in the slowing of Animeigo's production while the rest of the market saw huge growth.

Over this period of time a grassroots campaign to get Animeigo (or another company) to release a particular title had been gaining momentum. This particular drive has actually started when Animeigo was one of a very few anime companies. Eventually Animeigo was persuaded to purchase the rights to this show in order to release a limited boxed set of laserdiscs and a mass market release of tapes. It was decided that it would actually consist of 2 boxes of 6 discs each. The first box was late, just like the last box of laserdiscs Animeigo had released. Actually, it wasn't quite the same because it was far later. However, it was an excellent box of discs that was more than worth waiting for. The audio and video transfer were more than acceptable. The liner notes were good, and the subtitles were well done. The box itself was also a winner. Everyone was very excited to get the second box since the first one was so good. Unfortunately, Animeigo set a new record for just how late they could be in releasing it. When it came out it was just like the first box in quality except for the fact that some of the discs were mislabeled. That was a mistake but was acceptable since it was the only real flaw of the set. Granted, at $40 per disc you wouldn't expect it to be mislabeled but at least the content on the discs was good. Since the boxes had taken so long to come out they more or less were the swan song for anime on laserdisc in the US.

Around about this time the technological replacement for laserdiscs, DVDs, were gaining popularity. Animeigo outsourced the manufacturing of DVDs of some of their most popular titles. After a couple of tries the third party finally managed to release the discs without screwing them up too badly.

Animeigo started to work on mastering their own DVDs too. They took the material from their original boxed laserdisc set and announced that it would come out as 2 DVD boxed sets. Fans signed up in veritable droves. DVDs had a far greater mass market appeal than laserdiscs which caused the demand to be that much more. Time kept passing on and the first box of DVDs came out; very, very late of course. Unfortunately the first pressing of these DVDs was not the greatest. Many of the discs had pockmarks or bubbles in them. Many of them also had burnt-looking marks on them. Many of them looked perfectly fine but would not play. Needless to say the oh-so patient fans weren't exactly pleased. Animeigo announced that they would be replacing the defective discs and not shipping any more sets until the replacements were ready. A few months later the replacement discs began to show up. Unfortunately disc 2 was mismanufactured so that Animeigo had to press it yet again. Now the original recipients of the defective discs had their replacements and the remainder of the preorders were shipped along with the replacement discs in a batch of sleeves. By this time however, some people had already been forced to buy a new DVD player when their pickup head kept going out of alignment due to the poor quality of the discs in the boxed set. These problems were partially blamed on the issues of first generation DVD players even though many of the problems were also occuring on second generation players.

After the first set came out expectations on the part of fans was somewhat lowered. It was now deemed acceptable that any set of discs which didn't ruin the DVD player would be considered 'good enough.' While Animeigo was hard at work delaying the initial boxed set and its sequel they were also working on remastering one of the classic trend-setting works of anime. It was to be released as a limited one-time boxed set just for the fans. Obviously this set was delayed numerous times because that is just how Animeigo works. The set did finally come out though and was a masterful rendition of the classic anime. The sound and video were awe-inspiring in some parts. The box was classy and understated. All in all it marked a high water mark for anime DVD box sets.

Theoretically Animeigo was also hard at work on their flagship series of boxed sets, the sequels to the ill-fated first DVD box set mentioned earlier. However, only the second and third boxes have come out at this time. Most fans now assume they will be dead of old age before any material they haven't already seen on VHS comes out. For some reason even though the subtitles already exist, these discs come out at a glacial rate. It is possible that Animeigo is hard at work remastering the series but based on the video quality of the first 3 boxes this is somewhat difficult to believe. This series never had the finest quality of art and even if it was on a pristine 35mm print wouldn't exactly be a work of art.

Animeigo's latest box release is a DVD re-release of their second laserdisc box set. Since the original source isn't all that great it is doubtful that the DVDs would look much better than the laserdiscs. As mentioned before though, DVDs are far more popular than laserdiscs ever were so the series can have a wider audience with this release. The early reviews are somewhat mixed on the quality, some say the lasers look better, some argue that the DVDs are better video quality. There is nearly a universal consensus that the laserdiscs and even the VHS tapes are far superior to the DVDs. This is due to an ill-advised decision to not include the intro for each episode before each episode on the discs. The specifics as to why this was done are somewhat entertaining but needless to say it has managed to annoy and irritate a very large number of the purchasers of the box. Many were actually planning on returning their sets until Animeigo admitted their mistake and stated that they would remaster the discs and replace the already sold sets with new discs which actually contain the intro to the show before each episode.

Update: November 20, 2002 I picked up Bubblegum Crash the other day. It isn't a boxed set but it is another disc from Animeigo. Like the initial Urusei Yatsura boxed set it suffers from extreme crappiness. The mpeg2 signal is so degraded that it jumps, skips, and has massive artifacts when attempting to play it. This is utter crap. I don't understand how their quality standards can be so low as to release garbage like this, particularly when they've always prided themselves on the quality of their releases. Needless to say I'll be returning the disc.

With the UY boxed set Woodhead tried to blame it on out of spec players. That argument was bogus then and is utterly out the door now. My player is a Pioneer DV-38A. It's a relatively recent player that is frequently used as a $1000-$2000 reference player by home theater and AV magazines. If that isn't enough I also have a Panasonic GameQube that isn't particularly happy with the crappy UY discs or Bubblegum Crash. Then I have a Pioneer 909 DVD/LD combo player which doesn't much care for them either. Additionally I have a Sony Playstation 2 which doesn't much like them. Actually I don't think the UY discs even play in it. Beyond that I have 2 DVD rom drives which aren't particularly pleased when asked to play these discs. That's 6 different DVD playing devices that run pretty much the full gamut of technology and quality that are unable to smoothly play the aforementioned Animeigo releases.

I don't understand what is so difficult about doing it correctly. I can do a rip straight from laserdisc and output it to a $200 DVD burner without a single problem. Why can't a commercial company that prides themselves on quality get it right? Maybe Animeigo should just raise the price on their DVDs about $2 and not go with the absolute cheapiest, suckiest pressing plant they can fine. I can remember paying $69 per Animeigo LD back in the day. Those discs worked just fine. Cheap isn't everything. Actually being functional and not sucking is far more important in my mind.